Lynch-Stieglitz is one of six ADVANCE Professors, one for each college at Georgia Tech. 

“I was delighted to be asked to serve as ADVANCE Professor,” Lynch-Stieglitz said.  “I’m looking forward to finding out more about the concerns of faculty across the College of Sciences, and doing my best to work towards a Georgia Tech that is welcoming and a great place to work and study for all.”

“Dr. Lynch-Stieglitz is an internationally recognized climate scientist who is an expert on past climate, ocean circulation and composition,” said Greg Huey, professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “More importantly to EAS, Jean is an exceptionally effective leader with a clear vision. She has led efforts in EAS to modernize our hiring and recruiting practices to enhance diversity and inclusion. Jean is also an excellent mentor of both students and junior faculty. I am delighted that she was selected to be the COS Advance Professor. I know that she will lead COS forward on multiple fronts.”

Supported by Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Georgia Tech’s ADVANCE Program builds and sustains an inter-college network of professors who are world-class researchers and role models to support the community and advancement of women and minorities in academia by “advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion, advising campus leadership on policy and structure, increasing awareness and reducing the impact of implicit bias, and making data-driven recommendations for faculty retention, advancement, and satisfaction.”

In 2001, the National Science Foundation began awarding grants to universities to establish ADVANCE programs to “increase the representation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers.” Although the Institute’s NSF grant expired six years later, Georgia Tech has since upheld and expanded its ADVANCE Program to include the support and retention of women and minority faculty.

At Georgia Tech, ADVANCE’s ultimate goal is to “develop systemic and institutional approaches that increase the representation, full participation, and advancement of women and minorities in academic STEM careers — thus contributing to a more diverse workforce, locally and nationally.”

Ana (Annie) Antón (College of Computing), Terry Blum (Scheller College of Business), Nancey Green Leigh (College of Design), Martha Grover (College of Engineering), and Mary McDonald (Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts) complete the Institute’s six-member ADVANCE Program team. Previously, Kim Cobb, now director of the Institute at Brown for Environmental Science at Brown University, served as ADVANCE Professor for the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech. 

Finding climate clues in an ocean’s past

Lynch-Stieglitz has been with Georgia Tech’s faculty since 2003. Previous to her appointment as ADVANCE Professor, she served as associate chair in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from 2015-2022, where she has focused on creating processes to establish and nurture a diverse faculty community. 

Lynch-Stieglitz’s research uses the chemistry of tiny shells that accumulate on the sea floor to reconstruct how the ocean and climate have changed in the past. “The students in my lab are currently working to unravel how past ocean oxygen concentrations are related to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and climate, as well as how the ocean and atmosphere in the tropics have responded to varying levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and intensity of glaciation in the past,” she said.

Her research group investigates changes in ocean circulation and climate since the height of the last ice age, combining geochemical methods for gathering data on the state of the past ocean with the analytical tools and approaches of modern oceanography.

Lynch-Stieglitz currently serves on the Board of Reviewing Editors at Science Magazine, and was editor of Earth and Planetary Science Letters from 2012-2015. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2015 and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2019 in recognition of her work on ocean circulation changes over the transition out of the last ice age. She was also named Cesare Emiliani Lecturer by AGU in 2018, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of paleoceanography.